US Marine Says Iraq War Was One Long Atrocity

(PRESS TV) Ex-Marine Ross Caputi says American soldiers should take “ownership” of the war in Iraq that was one long atrocity. It’s no wonder, he says, that so many returning soldiers are overwhelmed by guilt at what they have done, with a higher rate of suicides than in any previous American war. “People do not go home and want to kill themselves because they’ve been helping Iraqis,” says Ross Caputi. “They go home and want to kill themselves because they’ve committed atrocities.” Ross Caputi now campaigns for justice for the city of Fallujah, which as a Marine he helped to destroy in 2004, when thousands of civilians were killed and 200,000 driven from their homes. stopwar.org.uk

FACTS & FIGURES

According to a “scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion” conducted by the Just Foreign Policy, nearly 1,500,000 Iraqis have lost their lives to the war. The number is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the U.S. media. Iraq’s anti-corruption board revealed in December 2007 that there were five million Iraqi orphans as reported by official government statistics. Alternet.org. Military suicides have increased since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a Center for a New American Security Suicide report. In the fiscal year 2009 alone, 1,868 veterans of these wars have made suicide attempts, according to armytimes.com. The VA estimates that about 18 veterans commit suicide every day. In 2010, more than 134,000 people made calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Of those callers, 61 percent identified themselves as veterans.

4 Responses to US Marine Says Iraq War Was One Long Atrocity

Fat pensions at 38 years old!
Boo Hoo for the mercenaries.
Anybody sgt and above is rich for life after 20 yr. service.
Also, a licence to kill?
Play with really neat bomb thingys.
Sex all over the world.

AMERICA IS BANKRUPT.
Thankyou for your service to our country.
(Now go to Israel and burn your US passport.)

Pick up a gun and go murder people in their homes. You godless fools. If you get your butts shot off you deserve it. Will you be led around by wicked men who give you money and guns all of your lives? Are you so ignorant of truth? It is murder of another human being no matter how you try to justify your actions! You are just the rich satanists lackeys, brute beasts bound for destruction. Patriotism has no basis in morality; Hitler had patriots. Get a clue fools. Winston

This is nothing new. Listen to vets from *any* conflict and many will tell you the same stories. The terror. The crimes they committed. The atrocities.

Troops on the ground are frequently treated to a lifetime of regret for disengaging their brains and "just following orders". Orders that (at least sometimes) apparently encourage murder, mayhem, rape, theft and vandalism. How would participating in such crime sprees affect *any* normal person?

It’s time to put a cork in "US Foreign Policy" (aka murder, kidnapping, rape and theft by any other name). It’s time to prosecute those high-level monsters that are fomenting this very-real, state-sponsored terrorism across the world.